First 100 Days: The Media-Overkill Awards

It’s widely recognized in the media that the “First 100 Days” system of measuring the success of a new president is an overrated, largely meaningless metric. But if there’s anything more cliché than the stories about this brief time period, it’s stories about how said stories are meaningless. So instead of trying to make sense of all of this madness (and it is, if you wade into it, madness), we’ve picked our favorite highlights from the rushing tidal wave of “First 100 Days” stories. Who was most skeptical? Who was most enthusiastic? And what did Al Jazeerathink?

Earliest Coverage: The big papers and magazines started close to the 90-day mark this year, but we still thought this award would go to Barack Obama himself, as his office has been blogging the first 100 days since day one. But the New York Times’ 100 Days blog actually startedbefore Obama was even president.Tricky!

Most Giddy: “No other American president in modern memory has faced a learning curve as steep as the one Barack Obama has encountered,” Fareed Zakaria gushes in his Newsweek column, “The Secret of His Success.” “In almost every arena, he has pushed the envelope to change policy, not worrying about the inevitable opposition from the right, yet always in a sober and calculatingmanner.”

Most Skeptical: Al Jazeera, which referred to Obama’s stem-cell and equal-pay initiatives as “low-hangingfruit.”

Most Disdainful American Coverage: The Washington Examiner’s Gene Healy likens our beanpole-in-chief to Napoleon, throws a latte jab, and refers to Obama’s presidency itself as a “powergrab.”

Most Disdainful Foreign Coverage: The Telegraph. Sure, go ahead and call us little Americans “besotted” with our president, but don’t claim that his “hope” and “change” campaign was nothing more than a bait-and-switch for overhaulingcapitalism.